“Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.”

-Langston Hughes

This quote is written in chunky, hopeful, red-orange letters on the floor of the District Six Museum. Located in Cape Town, South Africa, the museum memorializes the former residential area of District Six: a vibrant neighborhood of about 60,000 residents, all belonging to a diverse array of ethnicities, religions, ages, occupations, backgrounds, and sexualities.

District Six was a community. It was a family. It was seized and destroyed under Apartheid.

In 1966, the South African government declared District Six a whites-only area. From 1968 until 1982, it used the Group Areas Act to either seize or buy, for a grossly undervalued amount, the property of “non-white” residents. It then relocated these residents--who made up 99% of the population--to the barren Cape Flats. Homes, churches, mosques, community centers--all were razed to the ground. Some of the large churches were spared so that incoming White residents had access to places of worship.

Meanwhile, on the Cape Flats, former residents of District Six were separated into ethnic townships. Residents lived in flimsy shelters. Their commute to Cape Town for work, now 25 kilometers (about 15.5 miles) away, increased significantly. Workers therefore spent more money on commuting expenses. Many families sunk into poverty. The community spirit of District Six was destroyed.

Today, the District Six museum stands in one of the large churches spared in the area’s demolition. Indeed, walking through the exhibition of history is like a religious experience for some WCU students. After moving through the exhibits, one student remarked in their journal:

“...I feel like I have to almost catch my breath after that. The first thing I noticed about the museum was that the mirrors with people on them were facing forward, so that while you walked through the ramp you could not see their face unless you turned around. I thought this was powerful because from the back you could hardly tell what gender or race the person was unless you went out of your way to look for it. But at the top of the ramp, where the start of the apartheid information began, the people were then facing you. It was almost as if to represent that apartheid made it easier for differences to be noticed where they may not have been noticed before…”

The country of South Africa, much like the student, is still healing from the aftershocks of Apartheid. The museum uses education and storytelling to assist in this healing. Noor Ebrahim, one of the museum’s founders, and “Uncle Joe” Schaffers, an Education Officer of the museum, contribute to this effort. The two former residents of District Six paint a vivid portrait of the community in interviews with 2019 delegates from West Chester University; their interviews are highlighted in Journey to South Africa. Noor also gave the delegation a guided tour through the museum. He discusses his favorite elements of the museum: the floor mat, the memory cloth, and the street signs.

The floor mat covers the ground of the museum and portrays an overhead map of District Six. It is littered with the signatures of former residents; they visit the museum and sign their names to indicate the location of their homes. They also write stories about their lives in District Six on a hanging memory cloth. Finally, the street signs--preserved in storage for over twenty years by the very man ordered to tear them down--hang from the museum’s rafters as a memorial to the neighborhood.

The wounds of Apartheid run deep. Yet places of art, of memory, of education, and of healing such as the District Six museum contribute to South Africa’s pursuit of equality. In the words of Langston Hughes, it is a place where people can “hold fast to dreams” so they can fly.